


hope is the thing with feathers

by withkissesfour



Category: Janet King (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-15
Updated: 2016-07-15
Packaged: 2018-07-24 04:33:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7493937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withkissesfour/pseuds/withkissesfour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She’s eighteen and angry, and gets a tattoo that night. But she’s never been very good at rebellion. So the picture, red and fresh and forever, is small; is an imperceptible gathering of birds, flocking from a tree that finds its inky roots in the curve of her hip bone. (bianca's tattoo)</p>
            </blockquote>





	hope is the thing with feathers

She’s never been very good at rebellion. 

She’s always been by the book - comes home early and studies late, avoids the goon at the messy teenage parties, not even a parking ticket to her name. 

But it’s two in the morning, and the air is crisp, and she’s never going to be a cop ( _we regret to inform you that your application has been rejected_ ). She’s eighteen and _angry,_ and stumbling into a tattoo parlour - dragged by her tipsy friend, who flips her hair out of her eyes and drawls ( _biancaaaaa)_ as she points to the book on the counter, full of drawings, and she’ll get a tattoo tonight, she thinks. 

 _We regret to inform you that your application has been rejected,_ the letter read, and it beats at her skull, thrums in her bones, and there are fresh and messy tear tracks down her newly adult face. It’s the era of stupid mistakes. It’s that time of night (early, early morning) when there’s been too many vodka mixers and music she can _feel_ in her body; when her feet ache and the leather seat is cool on the back of her legs, and the job she’s always wanted, doesn’t want her back.

She’s eighteen and angry, and gets a tattoo that night. But she’s never been very good at rebellion. So the picture, red and fresh and forever, is small; is an imperceptible gathering of birds, flocking from a tree that finds its inky roots in the curve of her hip bone.

    (She grows up, learns to bear a hangover, learns to bear disappointment - buck up, try again.)

     (She’s nineteen when she tries again, when they write to say they’re _delighted to inform you that your application has been accepted._ She’s nineteen and ecstatic, and tugs a crisp blue shirt over her nervous frame, tugs a new pair of pants up around her hips, the bend of the tree hidden amongst her fresh clothes). 

-

The first woman she kisses has a sleeve of tattoos, coloured and complex, up and down her right arm.

She’s all hard edges - sharp cheekbones, razor cut hair, and a quick, dry wit; and even her name (even tangled up in Bianca’s lovelorn mouth) is hard, firm. _Kat._ It’s how she introduces herself, on the first day, with her hand thrust out to shake Bianca and her standard issue blue cap tipped below her eye. It’s what Bianca mumbles, weeks later, tugging at her pajamas in the police dormitory room and asking her out on a date; and what she mutters when she kisses her, outside some shitty Italian restaurant, eleven o’clock at night - and her mouth is soft against hers. 

Her laugh is soft too, she finds out. Soft and low and against her neck, in a barely used corridor of a barely used wing of the college (and she’s never sure how she went without this for so long). She’s making a mess of Bianca’s uniform, pulling apart the tight bun in her hair and tugging her shirt free when she spots the careful ink peeking out from the top of her pants. It’s her blushing that makes Kat laugh, it’s her embarrassed groan as she hastily tucks her uniform back into place ( _just a stupid teenager thing_ ) and Bianca can feel Kat’s hot, amused breath against her skin, her tattooed arm snaking around her shoulders and pulling her closer. 

Kat leaves, six months later. Kat hands in her badge, and her standard issue blue cap, and leaves without saying goodbye, like she meant nothing to her, like they didn’t mean anything to each other at all.

    (She watches Janet’s jaw tighten, and her hands freeze imperceptibly in their busywork, when she turns to Andy, suggests _the first woman I kissed_ as the answer to her security question. She watches Janet clear her throat, and glance at her, curiosity heavy in the air.)

  (Her mouth still fumbles over her name).

- 

Janet asks her to stay the night. 

There’s a dull ache in her bones, and a dull pain behind (around, above) her bruised left eye, and Janet asks her to stay the night. Janet crawls onto the bed covers, legs tucked underneath her folded arms, and tells her she’ll keep watch, eyes already heavy with sleep (clothes from the day before hanging off of her tired frame) and Bianca _adores_ her for it. 

It doesn’t take long for Janet to move, to shuffle up the bed, her mouth stretched in a yawn. Her head lands somewhere near a pillow, a little far away from Bianca, and she runs a hand over her face, bites her lip, turns to look at her.

    ‘I’m not doing a great job of looking after you’, she mumbles.

It’s then that Bianca reaches out, her shirt hitching up around her waist, and touches Janet’s cheek, tucks a stray wisp of blonde hair behind an unadorned ear, whispers _don’t be silly!_ It’s then that she notices Janet notice the tattoo, eyes trailing up and down her form, eyes straining in the muffled light to see the twist of the branch visible, with her shirt hitching up around her waist. Her mouth opens and closes, opens and closes, like she wants to say something, like she’s going to ask, but instead she just clears her throat, moves a little closer, smiles.

   (A little later, when they’re closer to asleep than awake, Janet moves her arm so it’s curved around Bianca’s shoulders, and Bianca curves her body against Janet - legs a little tangled and head tucked just below her collarbone - and she thinks they look after each other just fine).

- 

There’s something reverent in the way they undress each other. Janet’s lips are clumsy against hers, and Bianca’s not quite sure where to put her hands, and they’re both a little nervous, a little out-of-practice. But there’s something about it all the same, and they revel in it - taking a slow and careful climb up the stairs, Janet’s back against the bannister and her mouth on Bianca’s mouth, and her left shoe abandoned on the second bottom step. 

There’s something glorious about the way Janet moves against her, her hand pushing her down against the bed and her well-kissed lips trailing the length of her body (nipping behind her ear, below her collarbone, atop her breast, above the light tiger-striped stretch marks on her stomach). She can’t breathe, when Janet breathes against her, when Janet’s slender fingers reach up to trace the line of the ink that travels a little up her stomach, that stops near a freckle around the side of her body. Her touch is careful, like she might smudge it; and the kiss that she presses there is feather-light.

    (She tells her the story the next morning, half-naked in the half-light, legs tangled together and her chin propped on Janet’s stomach, reluctant to move, desperate to stay in bed. Tells her from start to finish, good to bad to _oh so good again_ , and lets her head fall against her, her nose trailing the curve of her hipbone. 

    _Maybe you should get a tattoo here_ , she says, kissing a line where ink would never ever go, and grins against her hip as Janet laughs, loud and low and with her whole body, brimming with joy). 


End file.
